Feature Enhancements

Propose a shortcut to users

When faced with repetitive tasks, users can find it monotonous over time. A user-friendly interface should provide a solution that saves users time and energy by streamlining repetitive actions. The interface should anticipate users’ needs and potential actions at any given moment. To address this, I propose implementing a shortcut to their most recent action. For example, when users collect songs and continually add them to their playlist, they can conveniently access a shortcut to directly add the song to their most recently selected playlist.

Ensure readability without exerting effort

Users should effortlessly read content without strain. The company, Deezer, a music streaming app, faced significant issues with legibility, particularly in the interface displaying lyrics. In this context, legibility is crucial as users tend to quickly skim text while singing along. After conducting tests with prototypes to guarantee legibility, we successfully delivered a visually comfortable interface for users to read.

Make the design adaptive to any device

An immersive interface offers a pleasant experience to users. However, Deezer faced challenges in creating an immersive full-width background interface due to constraints imposed by certain devices, such as the dynamic island notch on iPhones, which could obscure vital information like the title from the cover image. Introducing a device-friendly layout, such as an interactive cover that scales up and down with a single touch, helped maintain the app’s immersive quality while preserving legibility.

Provide users with more context

Symbolic design elements, like icons, can be interpreted differently based on users’ backgrounds, including their generation, culture, and the device they use. In our app, the “Share” icon faced challenges as users from diverse backgrounds perceived its meaning differently. This led to users searching for the feature elsewhere. Given the critical role of the <Share> action in our company’s success, a straightforward solution, such as offering a preview of the feature behind the icon, could greatly enhance user awareness of the feature and seamlessly engage them.

Art of providing at the right moment

Users are averse to interruptions in their flow. For Deezer, being a streaming music platform, it was crucial for users to instantly feel it as their personalized hub, complete with their favorite songs and albums. The challenge arose when attempting to convert users from other music platforms, even if they liked the Deezer app. Users often left because they didn’t want to rebuild their music library. To address this, the app introduced a tool allowing users to import their library from other platforms. Unfortunately, promoting this feature through a banner, resembling an advertisement, failed to capture users’ attention. As a result, users were not inclined to explore a potentially useful feature.

The key to the solution lay in contextuality: providing users with the tool at the moment they might need it, seamlessly integrating it into their app experience.

Immediately after subscribing and using the app, users typically engaged in searching and collecting songs. It was at this point that we introduced the feature as a tool assisting them in their purpose. Aligning with the right context ensured that the business’s and the user’s needs complemented each other seamlessly.

Multi-dimensional attributes to review

Designing a product necessitates reviewing various aspects, including usability, legibility, device-friendliness, desirability, look and feel, alignment with user and business needs, among others. Each of these attributes must be carefully examined to ensure successful product delivery. The joy of product design stems from critical thinking about such multi-dimensional complexity. When we can address this complexity through a simple solution, that’s when a small change makes a big difference.